Apple simultaneously developing several Mac OS X updates

Apple this week continued work on Mac OS X 10.3 Panther and Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Server, seeding developers with new builds of both operating systems while quietly piecing together the first update to Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Client.

Mac OS X 10.3 Panther

The Mac maker on Wednesday offered its developers yet another build of the near final Mac OS X 10.3.9, according to various Web and developer reports. One of the latest builds is reportedly labeled Mac OS X 10.3.9 build 7W94.

While sources have described the release of Mac OS X 10.3.9 as \'imminent\' since the last week of March, Apple reportedly located a few small bugs in the latter seeds of the 7W8x milestone, prompting the release build 7W90 last Friday.

A similar, and likely final, update to Mac OS X 10.3 Server is also reportedly in the works.

According to Web reports, the most recent build of Tiger Server is build 8A420. With the seeding of this build, Apple reportedly disabled the \"Portable Home Directories\" feature and instead asked developers to focus their testing efforts on Mail, Active Directory, and Access Control lists.

Developers say Apple has also asked that all previously filed bugs be checked against the latest seed, suggestion that the company hopes to declare a build of Tiger Server gold master in the near future.